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House panel set to OK cut in food stamp program

Senate Agriculture Committee member Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, voices his concerns as lawmakers begin mark up on the Farm Bill, officially known as the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013. (J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House Agriculture Committee is set to consider small cuts to the $80 billion-a-year food stamp program in an effort to appease conservatives who say the food aid has become too expensive.

The cuts are part of a massive five-year farm bill that costs almost $100 billion annually and would set policy for farm subsidies, rural programs and the food aid. The House panel will consider the legislation Wednesday, one day after the Senate Agriculture Committee approved its version.

The House bill would cut about $2.5 billion a year -- or a little more than 3 percent -- to the food stamp program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The legislation would achieve the cuts partly by eliminating "broad-based categorical eligibility," or automatic food stamp benefits when people sign up for certain other programs.

Last year more than 47 million people used the SNAP program -- about 1 in 7 Americans -- and the cost had more than doubled since 2008. The rolls rose rapidly because of the economic downturn, rising food prices and expanded eligibility under President Barack Obama's 2009 economic stimulus law.

Republicans attacked Obama in last year's presidential campaign for his expansion of the program, and many House conservatives have refused to consider a farm bill without cuts to food stamps, which make up about 80 percent of the bill's cost.

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The Senate approved much smaller cuts to the program, about $400 million a year. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., will have to appease all sides as he tries to push the farm bill through for the third year in a row, balancing calls from House conservatives to cut the program with Senate Democrats who are reluctant to touch it.

"I expect it to come from all directions," Lucas said last week of the food stamp debate.

The House bill would cut around $4 billion a year from food aid and farm spending, while the Senate bill would trim roughly $2.4 billion. Those reductions include more than $600 million in yearly savings from across-the-board cuts that took effect earlier this year.

Much of the savings in the House and Senate bills comes from eliminating direct payments, a subsidy frequently criticized because it isn't tied to production or crop prices. Part of that savings would go toward the deficit reduction, but the rest of the money would create new programs and raise subsidies for some crops while business is booming in the agricultural sector.

The Senate bill would eliminate direct payments immediately, while the House bill would phase out payments to cotton farmers, who rely on the program, over the next two years.

Like the Senate bill, the House measure also includes concessions to Southern rice and peanut growers who also depend on direct payments. The bills would lower the threshold for rice and peanut subsidies to kick in when prices drop.

The bill includes protections for other crops as well. Both bills would boost federally subsidized crop insurance and create a new program that covers smaller losses on planted crops before crop insurance kicks in, favoring Midwestern corn and soybean farmers, who use crop insurance most often.

This is the third year in a row that farm-state lawmakers have tried to push the bill through. Though it passed the Senate, the House declined to take up the bill last year after conservatives in that chamber objected to the bill's cost and insisted on the higher cuts to food stamps.

In 2011, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Lucas attempted to include the bill as part of the congressional supercommittee's effort to come up with a long-term deficit reduction plan. When that effort failed, farm bill action stalled until the next year.

House leaders have said they plan to put the measure on the floor this summer.

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